


Cause All These Empty Faces, They Got Nothing On Yours

by carrotcouple



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Misunderstandings, They both need therapy, don't take meds on an empty stomach kids, excuse aladdin and kougyoku's behavior, inadvisable handling of depression, judal is a doctor, no beta we die like kassim, past unrequited loves, wild i know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23445352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carrotcouple/pseuds/carrotcouple
Summary: She had wanted him to disappear and disappear he did. The winter of her last year in college, Kougyoku had driven away the only person who had seemed to care.The third time Kougyoku fell in love, she fell for someone she had lost.
Relationships: Aladdin/Ren Kougyoku, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 31





	Cause All These Empty Faces, They Got Nothing On Yours

The first time Kougyoku fell in love, she fell in love with someone well out of her reach and subconsciously, she knew, it could never be. And yet she fell in love. He had been much older than her and he shined like the sun. She could only attempt to follow him. Her love didn’t last very long and she discovered that he had simply been using her. She had known all along impending heart break would come but she still wasn’t prepared for just how much agony it would bring her.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” Aladdin had asked gently. And when she had looked into the child’s wide blue eyes it seemed like he could see right through her. Every inch of her wanted to tell him of her hurt, but she squeezed her mouth shut and forced her lips into a tight smile. He was only a child even if he was smarter than the rest and she perhaps felt more like herself around him. 

“I’m fine,” she had told him.

The second time Kougyoku fell in love, she was determined not to fall for some stranger who blinded her with how brightly they shined. So, while it was completely unexpected when she fell in love with her best friend, it made sense. She didn’t feel like she was trying to touch the stars. She felt grounded, calm, and comfortable. After all, it was small, beautiful and meaningful, like making daisy chains.

And then came the accident. She remembered how she had run into the hospital, heart in her throat, chest heaving with the anxiety in her. Everyone was outside the hospital room, but the only one sitting was an ashen Aladdin who looked like he had been to hell and back. There was a scrape on his cheek and his right arm was in a cast and sling. Kougyoku had wordlessly dropped into the seat next to him as they explained to her that Aladdin had made it out of the accident with only a couple of scratches. Aladdin had reached for her hand with his left one and he looked up at her with blue vacant eyes. He almost didn’t believe the one she loved would make it. That was what his eyes said. She knew it would destroy him. He had been everything to Aladdin. But in those eyes filled with anguish there was also concern.

“He’s going to be OK. Are you OK?” his voice was just as gentle as the last time he had asked her that. He didn’t look like a child to her anymore. He was too broken. He had been too lonely for far too long to be a child anymore. And she knew, she should have been the one to ask him that question. He was in need of her concern far more than she was in need of his. But she let herself get carried away by her grief and ignored how he felt. She squeezed his hand and said barely above a whisper.

“No, I’m not.” 

“I thought so,” was his reply. She had never wondered how he had known. He was Aladdin. He was the child who could see into the deepest depths of her soul. Because strangely enough, she could take off the mask around him, take down the walls.

_ He _ was in a coma for two years and how Kougyoku had wanted to stay by his side, but she had been quick to see, the one by his side was probably the one he loved the most. So she had locked away her feelings and watched them fade away. This heartbreak was not like the last. She didn’t feel like her body was being stabbed to death. She felt like there was poison slowly working its way through her body. It hurt. Sometimes she wanted to die. Sometimes she wanted that excruciating but quick pain from her first heartbreak. So she decided, she didn’t want to fall in love anymore. 

Aladdin had been her only light in the darkness, but then, he had always been that way, reaching out to her even in her most secret places and she still didn’t know how he just knew. Sometimes he would come to just talk to her as she studied at home. Sometimes he would pick her up from classes when his school would end early and her classes ended late. It was as if he knew that if someone wasn’t there to at least temporarily fill the void in her life, then she would fall apart. 

Her best friend woke up and he started dating the person she had expected him to and as she watched him frolic around and announce to everyone that could hear him that he was finally dating someone, Aladdin took a seat next to her. He had seen her misery once again and had approached her when she needed him the most. It was strange how much she had come to depend on the child she saw as nothing more than just someone she had once fought with far too seriously. Aladdin and she couldn’t even call themselves acquaintances. She didn’t know who Aladdin was in her life.

“Are you lonely?” Aladdin had asked. Kougyoku had almost cringed at the soul piercing question. She hated it when he came to her and asked her these kinds of questions when she needed it the most but felt like loathing herself for simply existing.

“Why would I be lonely?” She shot back at him and the question was filled with so much venom, Kougyoku almost felt ashamed of herself. Aladdin didn’t reply and simply continued to sit quietly next to her.

One of Kougyoku’s childhood friends went missing. He had been her foster brother once upon a time. He had played the most with her and her youngest sibling. Kougyoku remembered crying into her older brother’s shoulder because the police had found his jacket that had traces of blood on it. She had never been so terrified in her life. Kougyoku had been surprised to find out that Aladdin and he had been in the same foster care program when Aladdin showed up, just as frantic and worried. She had known that the two of them had known each other but she had cared too little to find out why. 

It turned out Aladdin had been the last one to see him and they had gotten into an argument which had gotten physical after which he had vanished. Kougyoku could see how petrified Aladdin was, how much he regretted their fight, how much he wanted him to be safe and just come back home. And then Aladdin had seen her and although she saw the raw fear in his eyes she saw concern bloom in those blue eyes too. He had walked straight over to her and taken her hands.

“It’s OK, we’ll find him. He’ll be OK. Are you OK? Do you want something to drink? I…” The rest drowned out as Kougyoku felt her ears ring and fury course through her veins. How dare he just walk up to her and always peek into the darkest parts of her? How dare he try and act like he was OK when he was always the one shaken the most? He was the child, so how dare he treat her like she was the one who was smaller than him? How dare he disregard his own feelings? How dare he make her his first priority? How dare he exist at all? Kougyoku didn’t know why she was angry. But all that she knew was that she wanted Aladdin out of her sight as fast as possible. 

So she had pushed herself off of her brother’s shoulder, had raised her fist and punched him straight in the face. The sting of her knuckles meeting his skin haunted her for years afterwards and the bruises on her knuckles stayed for weeks as if to brand the moment into her memory.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you always like this? Stop acting like this! It disgusts me!” Kougyoku hadn’t meant to say any of it. She hadn’t meant to hurt him but it all came pouring out so fast she couldn’t stop herself. In fact she didn’t mean anything that she said at all. In her blind anger she said things so hurtful that it hurt her own mouth to say it. “It’s your fault he disappeared! It’s your fault that he was in that coma! It’s your fault in the first place that that man used me! Come to think of it, you’ve always been there and yet I never realized the whole problem arises from you! It all leads back to you! Why should you act so concerned for others when you’re the one at fault? Why would you care about what happens to me at all?” Kougyoku screamed. 

And she had seen it in those wide, blue and naked eyes. He had been in love with her. Always had been. And she had been blind. So, so, so blind that she never even noticed the child that had taken her hand and had walked on all the thorns for her had done it because he had looked at her with eyes that saw her glow more beautifully than the moon. She didn't deserve any of it and it was fine that way because she didn’t want any of it. She was tired of it all. So tired she just wanted Aladdin to disappear.

“I hate this about you the most! I don’t want to see you ever again!”

She had wanted him to disappear and disappear he did. The winter of her last year in college, Kougyoku had driven away the only person who had seemed to care. 

Five weeks later when she needed someone to help her move her books, it hit her hard and she had broken down in the middle of the snow laden sidewalk and had wailed in the cold. She hadn’t wanted him to really disappear. She hadn’t meant anything that she had said, but she had gone and said it and lost the one person who had stood by her from the start. She had made the biggest mistake of her life and maybe Aladdin had been right to treat her like the child, because she was a selfish and mean child.

So she started to search for him after she graduated. Her childhood friend was found and brought back. He knew where Aladdin was but refused to tell her because she had been cruel to him. She had accepted that reason. She searched for him and didn’t stop. She found a decent job and worked well. She was respected by her colleagues and yet she didn’t stop searching. The way she had hit him kept haunting her.

The third time Kougyoku fell in love, she fell for someone she had lost. It was strange how she could still have her beating heart that had been bruised and broken taken straight out of her and put into the hands of someone else all over again. As if her heart didn’t fear the pain it could possibly endure again. 

At the age of twenty seven, just when she started truly believing she had lost someone precious she had run into him at her brother’s physics class. A tall, handsome TA. She had knocked straight into him and had almost failed to recognize him because of the way the light reflected on his red rimmed glasses.

“Aladdin…” She breathed. She had fallen in love so fast she wondered if she had ever actually loved anyone else. Just how long had she been in love with Aladdin and had never even realized it? She wanted to tell him about everything that had happened since he left. She wanted to hear him laugh, see him smile, observe properly this time how he had eyes only for her. But before she had been able to say anything else, he had bolted. “Aladdin!” She shrieked. It was no use trying to catch up to him. He was a born athlete and she barely passed physical education. She had had only one more solution. She walked up to her brother. “I need his contact information, now. Yes, your TA’s contact information. Don’t give me that look.”

\------o------

“You found him at last?” Mariam asked her as the two of them sat there and flipped through magazines while waiting for their hair to be done. Kougyoku nodded. “Eh, isn’t that neat? The guy you’ve been pining after for years has finally shown up again.” Mariam grinned cheekily. Kougyoku looked horrified.

“I have not been pining after him for years!” Kougyoku protested.

“Oh, yes, of course. I’ll just pretend those phone calls you made every day to Ka Koubun or whatever his name was asking if he had found ‘him’ yet was a figment of my imagination.” Mariam rolled her eyes. “Kougyoku senpai, you have been head over heels for him for a long time, how did you never see that?” 

“How am I supposed to know that?” Kougyoku snapped. “All I know was that I couldn’t forgive myself for what I did to him the last time I saw him. I was awful, Mariam. Then I saw him this morning and the first thing I thought was ‘Oh shit I’m a goner’. He probably hates me anyway,” Kougyoku muttered unhappily.

“Running away the moment he sees you is not the act of someone who hates you, senpai,” Mariam pointed out. “Although I sense some pretty bad trauma.”

“Mariam, the last time I saw him, he was distraught and terrified out of his mind and I slugged him and blamed him for all the misery in my life and on top of that after I realized he was in love with me, I told him I hated him. If that’s not enough to cause trauma to a teenager, I don’t know what is,” Kougyoku deadpanned.

“No way. You’re awful, senpai,” Mariam said in disbelief.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Kougyoku sighed. 

“By the way, you described him as tall, with a slender frame, long dark blue braid and red rimmed glasses, right?” Mariam asked.

“Yeah, why?” Kougyoku asked.

“Isn’t that him right over there?” Kougyoku turned her head and then saw him standing outside of the glass door that separated the waiting area from the salon. Kougyoku dropped her magazine and dashed out the glass doors, ignoring the fact that her hair was a mess of hair treatment and multiple awkwardly divided hair sections.

“Aladdin!” Kougyoku cried out. He started and turned towards her. His eyes widened and he looked like he was going to bolt again but then burst out laughing. Kougyoku blinked. She hadn’t heard him laugh in such a long time, and while it was very pleasant to listen to, she had no idea why he was laughing. She stared blankly at him.

“Oh, oh no, I’m sorry, Kougyoku oneesan, it’s just that your hair caught me off guard,” Aladdin tried to explain his sudden outburst. When Kougyoku realized the state of her hair she flushed all the way to the tips of her ears.

Why was she so stupid?

“Thi-this I got a free membership to this place and I thought I sh-should use it!” Kougyoku stuttered as she explained, her face burning. Aladdin raised his hand to his mouth and looked like he was going to laugh again but then a small feminine hand grabbed his and pulled his arm down.

“I want this hairstyle!” A pretty, auburn haired girl said. Aladdin looked down at the girl and Kougyoku saw the tender, caring look in his eyes. Kougyoku heard the sound of her heart cracking in Aladdin’s hands. It hurt. It wasn’t the feeling of being stabbed to death, or poison spreading through her body. Kougyoku couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to breathe. She simply wanted to cease existing. Only she had been chasing after him for so many years. He had left her when she asked him to and she had the audacity to regret it now. She watched Aladdin put his other hand on the girl’s hand and smile widely.

“Sure, we’ll go with this! You’ll look gorgeous with that hairstyle!” Aladdin beamed. Kougyoku bit her lip, turned and walked back into the salon, fighting back the tears. Her body had gone cold, but her face was burning up. She wanted to cry, but her brain wouldn’t let her.

“Kougyoku senpai, are you OK?” Mariam asked in concern. Kougyoku wished Aladdin had asked her that. Kougyoku put her arm over her eyes.

“Let’s just get this hair treatment crap over and done with.” She whispered.

\------o------

“Kougyoku? Kougyoku, are you home? Morgiana said she ran into Mariam who said you haven’t gone to work in ages and you took all your accumulated sick days in one go. Kougyoku, are you here?” Alibaba knocked on her room door before pushing it open. Kougyoku gazed at him lifelessly. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Alibaba sat down on her bed. “Have you been eating? You look awful! Let me go make some ramen.” Alibaba started to get up.

“Alibaba chan, do you know a way to stop existing?” Kougyoku asked. Alibaba sat back down on her bed.

“No I don’t and I’m glad I don’t know,” Alibaba nodded. “What brought this up?”

Kougyoku buried her face in her hands and started crying, her shoulders shaking violently.

“I found him, Alibaba chan. I found him,” Kougyoku sobbed. She heard a sharp intake of breath.

“You found Aladdin? How is he? Is he OK?” Alibaba asked. She could hear so many more questions on the tip of his tongue but he refrained from asking more.

“He’s great. He’s doing great, Alibaba chan. He has this perfect life and…I don’t exist in his world anymore. There’s no room for me. Please, help me. Why does it hurt so much? Why won’t it stop hurting? I just want to stop existing. I know I deserve it but it hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Help me, Alibaba chan. Help me. Help me.” Kougyoku clutched the side of his shirt and cried wretchedly into the bed sheets.

Alibaba later called the ambulance when she started vomiting blood. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate.

\------o------

Judal was there when she woke up.

“You’re an idiot, granny. Who doesn’t eat for that long and then takes meds on top of that?” He muttered.

“Thanks. I didn’t know,” she said dryly.

“I’ve never known you to be this extreme. Why did you do it?” Judal asked her.

“I don’t know.” Kougyoku honestly admitted. “I would just look at my food and I’d feel so disgusted I wouldn’t be able to touch my food. That’s strange, isn’t it? Especially considering how much you used to tease me for eating too much. I wonder what’s wrong with me.” 

“That’s a psychological problem. You’ll probably have to undergo some therapy,” Judal let her know, putting down the book he had been holding. “Do you want to know something interesting?” When she gave him no answer, he shrugged and continued. “The day you hit Aladdin, he went to the old abandoned library where we both were found when we were kids. Surprisingly, that library is still sort of abandoned. Someone must come in regularly to clean things up, but it’s empty. That has been his refuge since day one. It was my refuge too. You see, I was in that library that day. Do you remember that man, the one that hurt you?” Kougyoku looked up at him sharply. “After he broke your heart, Aladdin and Kouha broke into his house and trashed the place and vandalized his car.” Judal laughed. “It’s funny what two kids were capable of and they still haven’t found out who did that.” 

Kougyoku’s eyes widened in surprise.

“After Alibaba woke up from his coma Aladdin asked him to check up on you first. Alibaba, of course, couldn’t go anywhere yet because he had to go through the rehabilitation process. Even after Morgiana and Alibaba started dating, Aladdin kept bugging him to go check up on you first instead of meeting anyone else.” Judal explained carefully. Kougyoku felt horror forming in the pit of her stomach. “When Aladdin found me in that library he begged me to go back and let you know I was OK. Of course I refused to do that. You did hit the poor little idiot after all. But you know, out of all the guys you’ve met, I’ll say Aladdin has got to be the one who cares about you the most. It would be great if you could stop being such a brat and maybe take off some of your makeup.” Judal snickered.

“Hey!” Kougyoku hissed. But Kougyoku was feeling worse now that Judal had told her all of those things. 

_ “It’s your fault he disappeared! It’s your fault that he was in that coma! It’s your fault in the first place that that man used me! Come to think of it, you’ve always been there and yet I never realized the whole problem arises from you! It all leads back to you! Why should you act so concerned for others when you’re the one at fault? Why would you care about what happens to me at all?” _

The door slammed open and a breathless Aladdin stood there.

“Professor Koumei said that Kougyoku oneesan was in the hospital…” He saw her and his face lost all color.

“If the two of you don’t solve this shit by the time I’m back from getting a snack, I’m gonna lock you guys up in here for eternity.” Judal got up, pulling on his white doctor’s coat and walked out. “Have a good time.” He shut the door and both Aladdin and Kougyoku heard the audible click of the door being locked.

Aladdin silently took the seat Judal had been sitting on and Kougyoku wanted to just go back to sleep and maybe avoid everything. She noticed him wring his hands together. He wanted to speak, she could tell, but he was scared. Perhaps just as scared as she was.

“Are you OK?” There it was. That question. The question that had started everything and ended everything as well. He had always seen her at her lowest moments and he had always been there when no one else was, or perhaps, back then, no one else had really mattered to her. So many people had asked her that question over the past few years when she had been searching for Aladdin, but not once did that question leave her bare the way it did when Aladdin asked her. He always knew exactly how hurt she was, how the hurt would affect her life, how to help her so that her life wouldn’t fall apart. Aladdin had always known everything and the past few empty years without Aladdin made her realize, she had been able to see things in him as well that no one else could, but she had refused to help him the way he helped her.

“No. No, I’m not OK, Aladdin. I’m not OK at all.” Kougyoku cried, pulling up her arm and covering her eyes.

“Well, of course you’re not OK…” Aladdin whispered. “Well, you’re always like this when your heart gets broken.” Kougyoku removed her arm and almost glared at him.

“Always? Excuse me, I-” she started to protest. __

_ I am always like this. _

But she had survived those heart breaks, because Aladdin had constantly texted her and made sure she ate. Kouha had been by her side constantly during her first heartbreak and Aladdin had dropped by every now and then with the excuse of hanging out with Kouha. During her second heart break, Aladdin had been the one there to keep her health in check.

Aladdin looked at her and she stared straight back. He was scared. Kougyoku unconsciously put one of her hands on his and sent his question straight back at him.

“Aladdin, are you OK?” 

He looked shocked. He looked like everything that masked his true feelings had been stripped straight off. Was that how she looked when he asked her if she was OK? Kougyoku saw fear, concern, hurt, anger, regret and such passionate love, Kougyoku wondered if she was looking at Aladdin at all. Aladdin’s face was covered in grief the next moment and he lowered his head, his hands shaking and lips trembling.

“Who was it that hurt you? I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m so sorry.” Aladdin’s voice wobbled.

“What are you talking about? You don’t have to be sorry about a thing. I’m the one that’s supposed to be sorry for having said all those awful things I said back then. I didn’t mean any of it. I’m so sorry. I don’t really see you that way,” Kougyoku said urgently.

Aladdin chuckled bitterly.

“If only I had known that back then…” Aladdin mumbled. “If I had known back then then I would have been here to protect you this time around.” Aladdin looked up at her and Kougyoku could see it, he still looked at her with those eyes. Her head reeled. Something wasn’t making sense. “So just tell me which guy hurt you this time and I’ll go and whack him on the head for you.”

“Wait…Aladdin, back at the hair salon, who was that girl?” Kougyoku had to know first.

“Huh? Uh, Marga, my friend’s daughter,” Aladdin told her. “Wait a minute! Why do you keep changing the subject? Who broke your heart this time?” Aladdin demanded to know. Realization was beginning to dawn on Kougyoku. She had been so stupid. She couldn’t believe she had fallen into despair because Aladdin had been taking care of a friend’s daughter. Come to think of it, although she had been tall, she had looked far too young.

“You,” Kougyoku answered him.

“Huh?” Aladdin stared at her blankly. Kougyoku gazed at his blank face and started laughing, covering her face with her hands in embarrassment.

“Oh my god! I can’t believe I got so depressed because I thought you didn’t have room for me in your life anymore and you hated me because of what I did back then. I’m so stupid! This is so embarrassing!” Kougyoku laughed, blushing wildly but starting to cry at the same time. It didn't make sense for her to be happy like this after all that she had done to Aladdin, but here they were. 

“W-wait!” Aladdin cried out. He grabbed her hands and pulled them away from her face and stared at her, hope on his face. “I…I don’t really understand, so if you could be a little clearer about it-” Kougyoku squeezed his hands and then pulled him down.

“Just kiss me, you idiot.” She grinned. 

Aladdin first turned red, then he beamed, and then he scooped her into his arms and kissed her.

\------o------

**Author's Note:**

> How are we doing, AlaKou fandom? I'm still alive. This has been sitting in my drafts for three whole years, please kill me. I finally went "I should seriously post this." even though it's like...so bad. Though Magi is long over, I still love AlaKou dearly. I've been trying finish up writing incomplete stuff in my drafts and I have like FIVE AlaKou fics in there. Maybe I'll be posting them soon, who knows. Also, no offense to Sinbad, but since Kougyoku is my favorite character, I kinda...find it all to easy to turn him into a douchebag. This fic probably sounds like it ends SOOOO abruptly. I was trying to write more to wrap things up and properly deal with how Kougyoku had driven Aladdin away, but I could never get around to doing it and I wasn't about to do it now when my writing style has changed so much. So excuse it and imagine Kougyoku goes to therapy and she makes it up to Aladdin by loving him with all her heart. Anyways, thank you for reading!
> 
> Say hello on tumblr/twitter/insta: @carrotcouple


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